by Jeff Sutton
Alien From The Stars -- Jean and Jeff Sutton -- (1970) (Version 2002.09.13 -- Done)
ONE
A VIOLENT WARNING light flashed furiously.
The strident voice of a horn blared through the audiocoms. Echoing throughout the lower decks and passageways and cavernous quarters of the big ship, the horn held the lonely muffled sound of a drum-beat rolling upward from a deep well -- a sound heavy with doom.
Barlo, the planetary archeologist, reacted swiftly. Empty-handed, he sprang toward the door of his small cabin. The long corridor, dimly lit during the sleep cycle, was deserted as he burst from his room.
A secondary buzzer signaled the beginning of transition from Q space --
a warning that the huge Zemm liner faced imminent disaster. The knowledge speeded his steps.
Racing into an intersecting passageway, he hurriedly entered a launch well, slipped through a hatch into a small scout pod, pressed a button, and called the ops bridge.
"Pods away, pods away." The crisp response held a controlled tautness.
Barlo didn't ask questions. Swiftly yet calmly he punched a button that sealed the pod's well from the ship, another that opened a disc door and left the well exposed to the awful emptiness of space. A lever caused a thick elastic mesh to enfold his slight body; a switch sent the pod shooting out into the black firmament. Although he knew the Zemm liner had completed its transition from Q space, the harsh glitter of stars, seen through the ports, was reassuring.
He moved another switch. Sledgehammer forces generated by the maximum acceleration crushed his short, thin body against the elastic meshing. His long, prehensile fingers grasped another control and turned it; a beam of electromagnetic energy leaped from the pod, tying it to the huge starliner.
"Pods away, pods away..." A voice tolled sepulchrally from a speaker above him.
Barlo punched a button, and a screen glowed to life. Its light, amplified a thousand times, displayed the huge ship as a graceful needle poised against the fiercely burning stars. The sight filled him with sorrow.
Rapidly diminishing in size, the liner suddenly erupted into a colossal ball of flame that for a brief moment held the awesome brilliance of a nova. The illumination of the screen was blinding.
The harsh flare almost as quickly subsided, dwindling into a small, dull ember before winking into nothingness in the great black sea of space.
With the calm efficiency characteristic of his kind -- a cerebral activity unhampered by emotions
-- Barlo activated the pod detectors and called into a transmitter, "Scout pod four three seven calling survivors.
Scout pod four three seven..."
He repeated the call several times. Although the detector readouts covering the sector of the disaster were going wild, he realized they registered only debris; the silence on the call circuit told him he was alone.
Alone! Of more than thirteen thousand passengers and crew members, he alone had survived.
But of course the crew couldn't have acted to effect an escape -- not while a single passenger remained aboard. That law was older than space travel itself. Only the late hours he had chosen to review tapes of the ancient Okra civilization had saved him.
Briefly, he wondered at the nature of the disaster. There had been scant warning, only moments.
He surmised it had to do with the energy converters, perhaps the failure of a switch to prevent the accumulation of power. Not that
such disasters were unknown, but they were exceedingly rare. In his own life he had known of only a few.
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Although not a crewman, Barlo was well acquainted with the small scout pods used both for the exploration of planetary surfaces and as lifeboats, should the latter need arise. Checking the supplies, he was momentarily disconcerted to discover that the oxygen units were nearly depleted. He had scant time to find a suitable planet.
He didn't bother to transmit a distress signal; such an attempt would be futile. The occasional ship that might pass through this lonely realm out near the edge of the galaxy would be in Q
space, quite beyond the pod's limited communication facilities. But when the Zemm liner failed to reach its destination, the Unity's far-flung search and rescue units would comb the moons and planets of every sun in the vicinity of the liner's flight path.
Rescue was certain -- if he lived. He had but to find an appropriate planet.
Although Barlo had never traveled this particular sector of the galaxy, he could roughly calculate his position from the ship's flight corridor and the time of the disaster. A lonely area out toward the rim, it was sparse of stars with habitable planets. Consequently, when he activated the visual telescanner, he was startled to see a brilliant yellow sun leap into view.
Appearing to hang in splendid isolation, it dwarfed the sprinkle of stars around it. Instinctively he knew that the sun was within range of the small scout pod. He felt a stir of hope.
A grav detector locked on the yellow sun caused a transparent sphere on the instrument console to glow to life. The yellow sun appeared as a small dot at its center. Amplifying the power source by a factor of five thousand brought nine planets into view, each represented in the sphere as a small dot located according to its orbital position. His hopes rose. Of the seven outer dots, all but the farthest from the sun were accompanied by one or more minute white grains which represented moons.
Although Barlo's life rested on his findings, he studied the miniature replica of the planetary system with the detachment that came with long scientific training. The positions of the dots in the sphere indicated he was viewing the system from an angle of nearly 90 degrees from the plane of the ecliptic; that is, he was moving toward the sun's pole.
He returned his attention to the yellow sun. A medium-sized star of middle life, the spectrum of its photosphere revealed the presence of hydrogen and helium together with traces of calcium.
That was favorable, for such suns quite often provided planetary environments rich in life. He would have preferred a red sun, of course, simply because its radiance was more pleasant to the eye. When viewed from afar his own sun, Zaree, gleamed like an ember amid the harsh light of its neighboring stars. How much lovelier it was! But now he had no alternative; his scout pod had not the range to reach another star.
Briefly he wondered if this particular system had ever been explored. He thought not, for he recalled nothing of it in the records. That was not surprising. In the billion-star island that was the galaxy, it was far more likely to have escaped observation entirely.
His perusal of the sun finished, he turned the instrument on the planets, starting with the outermost. Another thousand-fold amplification in power brought it into the telescanner as a moonless, oblate spheroid.
Instrument analysis disclosed it to consist of a dense lithic core wrapped in a mantle of frozen ammonia, methane, and other gaseous compounds. But that had been expected; a planet that distant from a radiation source with the energy characteristics of the yellow sun couldn't possibly support his kind of life.
The next four planets proved equally inhospitable, nor had he expected more. He did, though, let his gaze linger on the sixth planet. Encircled by rings of meteoritic dust that caught and reflected the rays from the distant
yellow sun, it exemplified the wonders of a nature he long had sought to understand.
He pondered again the profligacy of nature, for the universe was rife with planets and moons incapable of sustaining more than the most elementary life-forms. Or was the ultimate design Page 2
long-range? Perhaps one day such planets might bloom while present life-rich worlds sank into the obscurity of death. Could life as he knew it be but a test-bed for the future? The prospect intrigued him.
He lingered a moment over its moons. Scarcely more than jagged chunks of rock, he reflected, they had been captured by the planet from a wide belt of similar flotsam that lay between it and the giant fifth planet.
As he turned the telescanner on the third planet, he felt a quickening excitement. He darted a glance at the instruments. Oxygen! The planet was rich with it! Exhaling slowly, he continued his investigation through a myriad of instruments. Finally satisfied, he lay back to sleep.
It was not until the end of the tenth sleep cycle that the third planet was large in the telescanner.
Splashed with blues and greens and tans, and circled by a disproportionately large moon, it rode in majestic beauty through the solitude of its orbit. The instruments, and the large polar icecaps, indicated an abundance of water, a rarity on all but the most favored of worlds. He felt his excitement mount. A lovely planet, were it not for its brassy sun.
Another sleep cycle passed, and then another and another. He had long since adopted a minimum-breathing posture, but now his oxygen was low. By self-hypnosis he put himself into a timed sleep in which his oxygen intake would be more than halved.
When he awoke again, the planet was gigantic in the telescanner. Seas, mountains, unbelievably immense patches of verdure -- it fairly screamed of life. Sampling the planet's electromagnetic spectrum, he received a jumble of unintelligible but patterned sounds which were self-identifying as the outputs of electronic communication systems. He wasn't startled; such communication devices were fairly common in many emerging cultures.
He commenced a slow deceleration, at the same time activating a number of sensors to obtain the specific data he needed. One recorded the outputs of a vast number of heat sources; he translated the instrument analysis in terms of a neo-industrial culture -- cities, transportation complexes, centralized governments. Another instrument pinged, and a small blip crawling across the face of a grid identified the existence of a man-made satellite. In a short time he determined that a large number of such satellites circled the planet.
This gave him pause for thought. A culture that possessed a satellite capability almost certainly also possessed the means for detecting and tracking such satellites; ergo, his arrival very likely would not go unobserved.
As the data flowed in, he began to etch a more complete picture of the planet's culture.
Tentatively he placed it in the early stages of nuclear development. That could be either good or bad, for he was well aware that technical development and true civilization could be two quite different things.
Civilization, in his own culture, was defined as the rapport of life in a common cause dedicated to peace, equality, happiness, and intellectual
achievement, regardless of technical status. He had seen numerous highly civilized planets which had not yet achieved interstellar or even interplanetary travel but which had achieved a harmony of life. Conversely, galactic history overflowed with the records of uncivilized but technically oriented societies which had attained the nuclear stage of development, only to perish in their own nuclear ashes.
He continued to decelerate, coming down over the planet's pole almost directly above the dawn Page 3
line. To his right the globe was caught in the web of night; to his left he saw the awesome gleam of ice mountains sparkling under a bright morning sun. As the ice cap fled to his rear, the land below became a splotched giant in shifting patterns of whites and deep greens. Here and there his vision was obscured by delicate filigrees of pale cloud. An irregular blue shape etched against the mosaic was recognized as a gigantic lake.
He knew he had to decide quickly where he would land. The polar and tropical regions were out.
Although he could make but a rough estimate, he knew it would serve well enough.
Programming a small capsule, he injected it into space. The capsule, remaining in orbit, would continually broadcast a distress message.
A change in velocity brought a rapid deceleration -- the familiar feel of a spacecraft tentatively dipping its nose into an air ocean. To his right, caught in the web of night, a huge city swept past, its existence recorded in terms of its energy sources. The land below, while nothing like that of Raamz, his own planet, held a wild beauty that captivated his senses.
Another vast megalopolis wheeled toward him. Extending from mountains to sea, it extended southward as far as he could see. Inasmuch as the coastline angled inward, he shifted course to keep from shooting out over what appeared to be unending sea. Beyond the smoke-blue ridges and peaks to his left, a tan desert rolled eastward into the rising sun. The desert was out, for Barlo's kind avoided direct sunlight whenever possible. Nocturnal, they preferred coolness and shade, but with night temperatures above the frost line.
Cognizant that he was moving toward ever more equatorial zones, he increased the rate of deceleration, felt some buffeting before the pod stabilized, and began to descend more evenly.
Uncertain of the mountainous terrain, he guided the pod toward hill country that lay midway between another large coastal city to the west and the rugged range he'd followed.
Well down in the depths of the air ocean, he made a more critical analysis of its contents. It proved to be a nitrogen sea containing a rich 20
percent of oxygen, with argon, carbon dioxide, neon, hydrogen, and other trace gases constituting the remainder. All in all, its chemical composition was much like that of Raamz, his own planet. The reflection brought a twinge of nostalgia.
The pod came down over a hilly terrain that was twisted and bent in tortuous ways. It consisted mainly of rolling hills cut through with ravines, both alive with stunted trees and bushes. But it lacked the water of the northern land. Here and there small structures told of habitation, but they were few and far between. The brushlined ravines struck him as ideal for concealment of the pod while he explored the surrounding area.
Abruptly he glimpsed movement ahead and realized it was a ground vehicle on a flat roadway.
Almost immediately a number of similar vehicles came into view down a grade from the west.
He brought the pod around, then saw he had made the turn too late; he was circling almost directly over the wide road.
Completing the maneuver, he gazed into a screen that revealed the scene behind him. Five or six of the vehicles had stopped. He held scant doubt that this was the direct result of the sudden appearance of the pod. He debated returning to orbital altitude to try for another landing but decided against this on the basis that the damage already had been done. Besides, if the pod hadn't been tracked before, it certainly would be now. The realization brought the imperative need to hide until he could assess the nature of this world and the kind of reception he might expect.
He reduced the pod's speed and let it drop just above the crests of the brush-covered hills. With the sun still low in the east, the rolling land appeared cool and inviting. He wasn't fooled; the parched nature of the ground and the physical appearance of the dwarfed trees and shrubs told him he was in a semi-desert. The sun, when it edged above the rim of the smoke-blue mountains, would be uncomfortably warm.
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His attention was caught by a curving treelined ravine. Following its course, he discovered an opening through the growth that appeared sufficiently large to accommodate the pod. He anxiously scanned the area around him. No sign of habitation was visible. Also, the roadway was separated by a number of intervening hills and gullies. The pod should be safe for a few days at least.
Hovering directly
above the opening, he looked into the downward viewscreen.
Aside from a few scattered boulders and bits of vegetation, the floor of the ravine appeared smooth and sandy.
Before letting the craft drop, he flipped a switch that amplified the acoustics from beyond the pod's shell. Rustling, whirring noises and occasional harsh chirpings filled the cabin. The former, he judged, were insect sounds, the latter probably those of the small feathered creatures he'd seen flitting among the bushes. Such life was common to almost all planets having a dense, oxygen-rich atmosphere. His own world was no exception. He considered the sounds reassuring, for there was no indication of larger, more formidable life-forms.
He let the pod descend slowly, watched the growth close around it.
Finally it came to rest on the sandy floor. Conscious that the instruments emitted electromagnetic waves that could lead to the pod's detection, he shut them off. Next he armed the destruct package -- a standard procedure when landing on a strange planet -- and memorized its firing code. Gathering a few items he thought he might need, he dropped them into the pockets of the reddish, metallic material that covered his slight torso.
Silently, then, he opened the hatch and stepped out into the new world.
Barlo heard the soft rustling of the small feathered creatures in the brush, felt the coolness of the breeze against his face. He was thankful that the yellow sun had not yet topped the mountains, for his large, violet, light-sensitive eyes, better adapted to nocturnal vision, suffered when exposed to glare.
Filled with the wonder that he never failed to feel when landing on a new world, he let his senses drink in the new sights and sounds and odors that bombarded him from every side. The alien stimuli gave him intense pleasure.
A feathered creature hopped into view on a limb. Its head cocked, its small bright eyes watched the planetary archeologist warily. Chirping, it hopped closer. Barlo probed its mind with his own; there was no response.
Neither had he expected there would be. Yet the telepathic ability to bridge two radically different life forms, while extremely rare, did occur. He had, on a ghostly planet beneath a dying red sun, exchanged thoughts with a small, furry creature that had adapted to deep underground burrows as protection against the encroaching cold. He remembered the creature wistfully; it had preferred to die with its world rather than move out into the universe.